32. The mannequin came to life

Quite a few years ago now I found myself working at a historical gaol (prison museum for you USA types) as a guide/administrator. This place was one of the oldest buildings in town and had quite the reputation amongst ghost hunters so it was always spooky working there. The early days had been fairly violent and there had been a few deaths including state ordered hangings so there were plenty of ghostly stories passed around. While I did see some very odd things during my time there, the building was old, a haven for local wildlife and far from windproof so any stories had to be taken with a grain of salt. We also had several dozen mannequins set up in ‘traditional’ poses, a few gathered in the courtyard, some in the cells and it was always fun to hear the gasps from the tourists when they saw the first one looming in the hallway.

Now to the story. As this was primarily a tourist town, the winter months were quite quiet and I could go hours without seeing another person. One day, I had ‘lucked out’ and managed to get a late closing one night and an early morning opening the next day. Both closing and opening required a torch as it was pitch black at this time of year and lights were not installed throughout the entire complex. I had only had one tourist the entire day so, to defeat boredom, I decided to take one of the surplus mannequins from the storeroom, dress them in some early convict ladies garb and set them up in the kitchen in the ladies wing. I decided I would set them up facing away from the door, holding a bowl in one arm and an egg beater in the other. I made sure everything was very sturdy and closed the kitchen up for the night.

The next morning I arrived at 6am to open up and was making my way through the complex when I heard something strange. The room I was in shared a wall with the kitchens and there was an odd, scraping noise coming from the other side of the wall as I stood there listening in the dark it stopped… started again… then intensified, accompanied by a tapping noise. A little freaked out, I continued around the building (it was set up in circular shape with rooms on the inside) making my way slowly towards the kitchens. As I stood outside the door I could hear this irregular noise quite clearly and decided to use the sliding hatch on the door to look into the room first. The mannequin was moving. Not just moving slightly, but quite visibly tapping one foot up and down as it slowly turned the egg beater, it’s arm raising and lowering. As my eyes adjusted to the dark my brain started to process what I was seeing. Whether possession or poltergeist I was not sticking around for this thing to turn around, I SLAMMED that hatch closed and hightailed it back the way I came, not stopping until I reached the main office where I promptly bolted the door and turned on every light I could find.

At around 10am we had our first tourist come through the doors. I had convinced myself by this point that surely what I had seen had been some sort of hallucination. I must have heard the building settling and my brain filled in the rest, it was dark after all. Knowing I would have to open the kitchen for the tourist to pass through I hung the “back in 5 minutes” sign on the front desk and snuck quietly towards the kitchen door. I slowly opened the hatch and peered in to see the mannequin standing in the same position that I had left it, not moving. With everything back to normal I breathed a very deep sigh of relief and opened the door. The second I opened in the door, the mannequin began to mix the egg beater, frantically tapping its foot. I have never been more terrified than at that moment, it was broad daylight, I couldn’t convince myself nothing was happening this time, it was happening right in front of me. I was alone in a gaol with a possessed mannequin and I was the only authority figure with an innocent member of the public soon to be coming through this very room, what the hell was I supposed to do in this situation?

I remember thinking “It’s only plaster and paper mache. just kill it! Smash it quickly, run like hell and never come back!” as I picked up a meat mallet and walked, extremely hesitantly towards the thing. As I got closer, it began moving quicker until I was within reaching distance. Fully expecting this thing to turn around and bury the egg beater in my chest I grabbed a hold of its arm only to have the mannequin erupt into a terrible… croaking hissing noise. I near crapped myself at this point but something about the hissing sounded surprising familiar. Gaining some composure I looked into the bowl the mannequin was holding in it’s other arm. Looking up at me, with it’s head stuck firmly between the beaters was a King skink, about 40cm long. I took my hand off the mannequin’s arm and the skink began to run. Stuck as it was, it ran around in circles in the bottom of the bowl, which turned the beater attached to the mannequin’s arm, which proceeded to move up and down and cause the whole thing to vibrate, tapping its foot on the ground. Five minutes later I was letting the poor guy go in the courtyard while still giggling hysterically to myself and by the end of that day that mannequin was packed up and back in storage… just in case.

33. I hit a bear cub and pissed off its mother

It was winter break, freshman year of college. I drove up to visit one of my friends in Northwestern Pennsylvania for New Years. I needed to be back home the next day for work, so I decided to drive back at like 2am. I was driving down Interstate 79 (for anyone reading this from PA, it was around Grove City where this event took place) and I maybe saw two cars in a sixty mile span. I came up around a bend and saw what looked like a black bear in my lane and I swerved and went off the road and crashed into the tree line next to the highway. I was in the middle of nowhere and the bear just booked it into woods. My car was fucking totaled and I knew I wasn’t gonna see any cars for hours to help me out. I called 911 and they said they would come in like twenty minutes. I got out of the car and stood up on the shoulder of the highway and waited. After about five minutes I heard some rustling in the bushes and there it was, the fucking bear. Turns out when I went off the road I hit a cub and mama bear was pissed as all hell. I booked it over to the back of the car and hopped in the trunk. Thank god I had a big Ford Expedition so the bear couldn’t fuck with it too much. For another half an hour the bear tried ramming the car and was trying to get at me in a frenzy. The police showed up and the sirens scared mama bear off into the woods again. It was the most terrifying experience of my life.